Adventure across Varda's landscape was no minor feat, as was proven, again, on the morrow. When the stiffness of the injuries set in, and the depth of the bruising became obvious, his Shadow declared herself a liability in combat. No wonder, she'd gone completely apeshit on the monster with a rib cage that was almost a flailed chest. Slightly less agility, less able to shift her frame from the direct path of those rocks and there wouldn’t have been any almost about it. To think on it nearly made him break out in cold sweats. The mildly broken leg was more than an inconvenience. Bones mended though, they’d both come out luckier than the few Elves under where the beast had clawed free of the ground.

Taipan, by virtue of being somewhat crippled for a few days, as she'd announced loudly and with some unconventional profanity that morning, was reclined on a wagon with her similarly incapacitated kin. She was ill-pleased about it, but, at least, not injecting her venom into everyone around her.

Ulric was walking next to the wagon containing his wife, eyes roaming the immediate vicinity. He was still pathfinding the refugees, only now he lacked the foresight provided by Taipan's scouting. To rectify that incredibly hazardous situation, he was running ahead every hour or so to trailblaze a path. This pathfinding swiftly taught him the value of his wife's efforts on their behalf, as it was a brutal pace to maintain throughout the day, even in his condition. The raw scrapes did him no favors, even treated as they were. Sweat burned under his bandaging within an hour of his exertions.

Midsunsrise was just past, and they had made their way from the camp valley into a higher ground, skirting massive boulders and cliffs that dropped to what looked to a now quite large canyon housing a river. Ulric's thighs and calves were going slightly rubbery at the unceasing effort of five hours of sprinting, hill climbing, and hill descending through the rough landscape of these highlands. Prespang was some gnarly hiking around these parts.

At the moment, they were keeping to the high ground, away from the tangled canyon lands that had replaced the swamps of days prior. The elevation generally was lifting and Ulric was fairly certain they were working out onto a small plateau. Even the fjords were evening out, becoming a more monolithic cliff face along the coast, some two or three hundred meters proud of the white caps of the Vatyn. It was good news, the terrain here, being more even despite the hummocks of thick moss and increasingly tall grasses, was far more forgiving of the carts and those who walked alongside them.

Whispy tufts of seeding grass stalks marked the wind's passage, whispering softly as it blustered off the sea. Running into their faces as it did, Ulric was glad they were traveling effectively downwind. It was most of the warning they got before another piece of Varda's more virulent ecosystem found them.

It began with the rich, cloying scent of pollen. What with the spring being in full bloom this was not unusual. What rang alarm bells in Ulric's hindbrain was that there was the ever so faint note of the volatile organic compounds that were associated with rotting meat. Esterdiols, sickly sweet, the sharply nail polish remover scent of ketones, and the fouled egg odor of sulfides put his instincts on edge. Taipan was the first to give words to the growing unease that was, until she spoke, merely a bad vibe on an otherwise wonderful day for a walk.

"Ulric, do you scent that?" Said the artisan navigator of Varda's wilds, alarm clear in her tone.

For the first time, he intentionally sniffed and the breeze obliged with a heavy dose of the odor that had provoked his wife's question. It was floral glory mixed with decaying foulness.

Features scrunched against the offensive bouquet, Ulric responded in the affirmative, "Aye. Flowers and death, Wife."

"Any idea what it might be up there? We can't be far from the source." He noted.

Painfully slow, the tall dark beauty climbed down from the wagon seat to stand beside him, her ears twitching anxiously. She closed her eyes and made a series of careful sniffs, drawing deep on the air. Ulric saw her expression fall even as she made an olfactory survey of the wind. Uh oh.

A long-suffering sigh from her roost made him nervous. Taipan wasn't afraid of the things out here, not generally. That meant that whatever was ahead was a real treat.

"It is [Gilded Queen's Rose], Ulric. In full flower." She said keeping her voice down to prevent panic amongst her kin.

Another few whuffs of the breeze and her features took on an edge of concern.

Waving him over his partner walked him through how bad becomes worse on Varda.

"By the thickness of the scent, I think that we are coming to a nursery, the [Gilded Queen's Rose] has flowered and brought bulbs to fruition, they are now themselves grown and form a cluster of conjoined organisms. Such is why it is imperative to destroy them before they can flower, or as soon as as can possibly be managed." Explained the forest-wise Huntress.

She shook her head sharply and signed "apprehension" even as her warning whisper conveyed to him what they were up against.

Voice low, Taipan said nervously, "Even a triad would not try going through this, Glade Chief. We would run wide, as wide as necessary of it, to avoid catching the monsters’ attention. They share senses through their roots, passing information from flower to flower and sharing the nutrition of the kills that are digested."

Fuck. Taipan had told him of the herbaceous monster once, a while back. It was a Greater beast, for one, its core housed in the giant, fang-petaled flower stem, the flower which could process a cow, like branches down a wood chipper. It was also possessed of a sinister toxin, potent hallucinogens, and liked to use spores to cause its victims to lay down and bask in the suns' warmth, even while they were eaten. If they resisted, the thorns adorning the numerous vines that shrouded its base, vines that acted as a half dozen cat o' nine tails lashes, emitted acid that sounded like a piranha solution, eating through pretty much any organic material in seconds. Overall, not a good time.

"You're saying there's an entire field of them somewhere up ahead, this thing that you described as a hideously dangerous Greater beast? As in, more than one, which would have been bad enough?" Ulric checked.

She flashed him the Elf sign for "Yup."

Ulric thought it over for a minute. Detours of any kind were costly, given how slowly they already moved with the victims of Prosper's Bane production facilities. Things would be even harder now, without Taipan scouting and providing fresh meat to supplement their supplies. Ulric could hunt, but he couldn't do that and also lead the group. Would they have enough food to make Kistalfer?

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Starving in the wild wasn't exactly how he had envisioned separating from the Aes'r rescued from death by torture. There was also the consideration that the wounded were going to draw in scavengers and apex predators alike, more samples of the heavy hitters of Varda's ecosystems would investigate all this lovely food being dragged around with them. The longer they stayed out here away from civilization, the more likely it was that something even worse than whatever in the hell that nasty from yesterday was would find their trail. Could they afford to go around? Could they risk the monsters ahead?

"Taipan, does fire hurt these Rose beasts?" He asked, reaching for clues to find an angle on this problem.

Her chin dipped in answer, but her words added new layers to the chaos onion he was eating, "Incendere is highly effective against the flesh of the [Gilded Queen's Rose], but even the slightest ember causes them to enter their mobile state."

Voice dipping, as if at an extremely unpleasant memory, she continued, "They withdraw their roots from the soil and crawl at somewhat impressive speed across the ground, to avoid the source of the flame. They also become incredibly hostile and fill their surroundings with toxic spores. For a single Rose, I would say that this is a good idea, for a nursery…," Her ears bounced once violently and she immediately waved a hand to reject that notion, the fearless Amazon aggressively opposed to his suggestion, continuing her dire warning, "If a nursery detects even a single cinder of fire they will go mobile and the wind will carry their poison in a cloud to overwhelm us, unless we can come at them from upwind." rendered his budding idea moot.

She said what they both were thinking then.

"If we achieved that, then they would smell us and begin hunting us. There would be no point to combating the creatures, we are best served fleeing."

Damn. So no [Stormfire] bombardment then. The consuming plasma ball could get incredibly powerful as it traveled encompassing a pretty wide area, but probably not enough to wipe out an entire field of the little nasties.

On to the next thing then.

"Can we go around then, get upwind and just go? Without provoking an attack as we do?" He asked, slightly hopeful.

The sign for "Unwise." spelled doom for plan B.

"With so many, and moving so slowly, we woulds must go far, far to escape their attention. A league, maybe two, to keep our scent from them. The beasts prefer to remain still, it costs them less energy, but there are always extremely aggressive variants in a nursery and those would come for us at first notice. The others would follow when blood was spilled, in either direction."

Double damn. No to fire. No to flight, unless by a huge margin. A margin that could very well prove fatal to all those who followed him. If not to the lack of supplies, then by incurring the attention of the monstrous natives of Prespang's coastal wilds. The scent of blood and wounded was as a lit beacon, calling whatever thought it could feast on them. Such was Taipan's assessment that morning. Ulric lifted his hand to signal a stop for the convoy and sat on a hump of grass to have a think, totally lost. After a few minutes of fruitless meandering on the situation, he turned for help. No sense having a guide if you weren't going to ask for their professional opinion.

"Options?" Ulric asked of his Shadow.

"We are, Glade Chief, to borrow your odd uses of speech, completely boned." Said the Shadow.

With that assessment, Ulric rolled backward off the hump of tall grass and lay on his back, the deep blue of Varda's skies and majestic clouds rolling fluffy and white overhead, uncaring of the trials below. The Twins were dancing their rounds ascending through their course with equal dispassion to events on the terrestrial plane.

Why was adventuring so goddamned hard?

"Why does this adventuring have to be so goddamned hard?" He bitched aloud.

Rich laughter, followed by a moan of pain from disturbing her abused ribs, met his observance.

"Welcome to Varda, my love. It is with good cause that few know the peace of a death in sleep." Said his Wife, enjoying his suffering as an offset to her own.

The pause was taken advantage of by the refugees, the Orlethrem having unloaded their burdens with almost fatalistic relaxation. Tight groups, sort of impromptu support groups, what Taipan referred to as social "Rings" had spontaneously formed once the Aes'r were freed, and they were very strongly maintained throughout the trip. It appeared that these types of clusters of a couple of dozen or so individuals was a natural tendency for Elves. Taipan's lack was atypical. According to her own admission she had less than a quarter of the normal close relations as most of her kind. It figured that he'd have attracted the Iriel'en equivalent of a misanthrope.

Sunscrest came. Sunscrest went. The sea breeze continued to bring with it hints of the calamity ahead and Ulric found no revelation from his sightless stare into the heavens.

What about a new spell?

The intensity of their adventure since leaving Iriel had pushed him hard, had fed him a host of combat experiences and honed the lessons of his trainers against the whetstone of bitter, to the death battles. As a result, his classes were becoming refined, his capabilities evolving to meet his potential. The Elementalist class in particular was facilitating a rapid growth in sorcery, especially since he'd regained his full range of elemental magics. There had been those odd, almost instinctive metamorphoses of spells he had long since mastered to consider as well, twice his magic had "twitched" to turn an already potent [Flame Crash] into the volcanic [Stormfire] and the humble [Wind Blade] into the devastating [Galvanic Mistral].

He had a feeling that his title of Ceraun Touched had some part to play in that as well, some nebulous guide towards the impulse to extend his magic outwards. Ulric forgot just how divergent reality here was compared to his old life. Will could become reality on Varda. Magic could bridge the gap between heart's desire and what was. Possibility itself was mutable through the core of an evolved creature. Did that mean he could do anything? Not really, the limits were certainly out there, dig too greedily and too deep and the Balrog awaited. The law of unintended consequence would devour the unwise mage whole.

Ulric was starting to get the sense that the Akashic classes were a buffer, a built-in safety mechanism, probably installed by the Watcher as a sort of evolutionary guide to prevent the reality hack that was a core from causing its owners to delete themselves unintentionally. Mages sort of broke that relationship by externalizing their magics in a less limited way. They also incurred the proportional risk of leaving the calm shores of class skills, precisely guided and directed mana, and entering the deep waters of true magic. Or, as Taipan tended to think of it, straying away from the lit paths to wander into the Dark. Only literal decades of alien knowledge had permitted Ulric to wield this biocrystalline reality warper without the aid of Varda's established magus training. He was creating his own path through the endless depths.

An answer to this current problem was out there, he had only to find his way to it, without unmaking himself along the way.

Question was, would a new spell do more harm than good? Ulric just didn't know how to assess the risk. Firstly, thanks to the teaching of Iriel's Dragons and Archmage Gother Cenur'it, he'd come a long way in weaving mana to create more precise spellforms with better control over the latent forces of Varda. Secondly, he'd been getting more familiar with wielding his powers, flexing this awakened core to its fullest. Thirdly, learning from the school of magic Adept Werona Autumnclaw hailed from had expanded his understanding of what could be done with mana and how it could be manipulated. Counterpoint: Magic isn't done by half measures. Once you bring a weave into being, empowered through your core, done is done and you had to live with the consequences. If he created a construct that set off those lush flowers of doom then they were asses in the wind and there was no guarantee Ulric could womp up something off the cuff that would do the trick.

"Taipan, I'm coming up blank," Ulric conceded, "Would you mind going over everything you know about these nasties again? After that, I'm gonna go up ahead, just to the edge of that little valley, and get a look at this nursery, as you call it. If nothing else, it sounds like something a man might not get to see too often."

He needed to see it for himself and he needed to do so with the details of the Greater beast fresh in his thoughts. Maybe something would come to him.

While the injured Orlethrem lounged around in an illusion of carefree relaxation, Taipan reiterated all that she knew of the [Gilded Queen's Rose]. When she finished instructing him, with warning to make as little noise as possible, step softly, and go no closer than thrice a stone's throw, Ulric went ahead to see what all the fuss was about firsthand. He went slowly. He made as little noise as he was capable of making. And, he lived in mortal terror for every second of his passage that the wind would change direction, an errant current reversing and bringing the smell of wounded Elves to the super predators that hid behind the rise. The only saving grace was that, if the winds did shift, they'd carry the smell of their wounded comrades and it wouldn't be him fucking everybody over.

Seeing was still not quite believing.

It's one thing to hear about a five-meter-tall monster plant, like something out of Little Shop of Horrors, except religiously cycling steroids and hitting the gym for a living, and it was another thing to witness it. Great viny roots bigger than his legs spread out from the base of the monster, waving as if wind-blown to hide the deliberate searching pattern for those woody, gnarled, thorned tentacles, barbs gleaming black and big as his hand, as they canvased the surroundings thoroughly, if slowly. The central stalk was smooth, a dark forest green, thornless, and had a very slight taper from his entire wingspan to merely larger around than his linked hands could encircle.

Atop the stalk was the reason for its name, a great set of rose petals, each large as a beach towel, pearly white, and each one lined with a brilliant metallic gold that sent rays of light scattering across the nursery as if from a dragon's hoard. It was beautiful. Add to that, about twenty more smaller versions of the same monster turned the center of the dell ahead of him into one of Varda's wonders. The kind you only need to see once before wishing that you never do so again, and which you were glad to have witnessed from far, far the hell away.

Ulric resisted the urge to whistle softly. Or run screaming. Neither were exactly sound decisions, even if they were understandable.

"Now that is just one hell of a thing." Ulric whispered ever so softly to himself.